


Overcoming

by ShrimpZilla



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2759882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShrimpZilla/pseuds/ShrimpZilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen's withdrawal has him questioning what is real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overcoming

**Author's Note:**

> written for the dragon age kink meme.

They had started spending nights together. Sometimes in his bed. Sometimes in hers. They were still being discreet, professional, but it wasn’t an out and out secret anymore.  
  
He had been sleeping better because of it. It became easier to overcome the nightmares when he could rouse himself to the sound of her breathing, the feel of her skin, the smell of her hair. His dreams weren’t real, though the ones that tormented him most had never really been real anyway. But now he was getting better at drawing the line between what the lyrium made him see and what mattered.  
  
He was getting better.  
  
He thought he was, anyway.  
  
It was subtle shift. He supposed it was his mind’s own trick against him. But the dreams began to change. The desire demons always paraded before him as Amell. Sometimes as other women he had known or fancied, but always Amell. She was what they had actually tortured him with in the Tower and so that was how it remained in his head. The things she had done to herself. The things she had done to his friends. The things she begged him to do to her. He often felt guilty that these images still came to him. He was with the Inquisitor now and he loved her more than rightly should have been possible. But he couldn’t control what his mind conjured.  
  
That was when things changed.  
  
Slowly Amell shifted, transformed. Soon it was the Inquisitor bound in chains before him writhing in sick purple light. He tried to ignore it as he had begun to learn to ignore the other dreams. He focused on the fact that she was there, beside him. But it only made him wonder. Was she?  
  
He awoke with a silent scream from one such dream. Amell and Trevelyan entwined. Sweaty and wet and searching each other bodies for his benefit. He disgusted himself with the depths his mind could sink. The Inquisitor was curled against him. Her head on his chest and her arm slung over his waist. He looked at her and felt love and then terror. A cloud must have passed over the moon for the light in the room undulated. He saw shadows wind across her face. His stomach dropped. What if she was just a demon sent to torture him in new ways? He untangled his body from hers, slid himself to the edge of the bed. He was being crazy.  
  
Was he though? What was the crazier thought: that the last decade of his life had been a fabrication of demons or that four people had somehow regained control of the Circle Tower when all the Templars had failed? And look at the life he had been living since then anyway. The events in Kirkwall alone were the stuff ripped straight from nightmares. No, this wasn’t real. None of this could be real—  
  
He held his head in his hands and tried to fight his way to sanity.  
  
“Cullen?” Her voice in the dark was like a beacon to bring him home. Maker, what was he thinking? He had escaped Kinolch Hold. He had survived Kirkwall. It had all happened. It had all made him the man he was today, now. The man who loved this woman and who she, somehow, loved in return.  
  
“Nightmares,” he breathed. He slipped himself back in beside her, let her hold him like a child against her chest and whisper small comforts to him. He fell silent and waited for sleep to come. And it did once he felt safe again. Once Trevelyan had gone back to sleep as well.

 

\--  
  
“I finally finished The Tale of the Champion,” she commented. Cullen looked over from where he was tying his boots. She was sitting on the edge of the bed doing similar. She never seemed to mind getting her sheets dirty.  
  
“Oh?” He felt like he was the only one in Skyhold who hadn’t read Varric’s book, but that was because he had lived it. Trevelyan had come to him giddy and excited when there had been a mention of him in the book. He didn’t understand why Varric thought it was appropriate to call what Hawke had done saving him from the brothel when really she had just continued an interrogation he had been having trouble with. There had also been some between the line readings that had given rise to Trevelyan making fun of him for having a crush on the Champion. Which he absolutely had not. The woman was as crazy as they came. Varric had told him it was just good storytelling but Cullen had been peeved by it none the less.  
  
“I liked it. It was kind of romantic.”  
  
“Which parts would you deem romantic?” He said with a slight laugh. Some of the more outlandish things Hawke had done could rightly qualify he supposed. Especially with the way that Varric tended to paint the pictures. She beckoned him over as he began to put on his chest plate. He didn’t need the help with it, but he liked having her do it.  
  
“Well, she wasn’t a mage but she loved one. Stood with him, supported him against all odds.” Cullen glanced at her over his shoulder as she fastened the armor to him. He couldn’t see the expression her face. Couldn’t tell if she was joking.  
  
“That man was a fanatic. Manipulative and single minded. Hawke was lucky he didn’t get her killed.”  
  
“Is it so wrong to be a fanatic of freedom?” She answered back. Her tone was even but he sensed a bit of heat beneath it. They rarely argued outside of the war room where he felt he was constantly trying to combat preposterous ideas on her part. He blamed his clipped tone on the lack of sleep that had plagued him lately. And on the sensitive nature of the topic at hand. No one really spoke of Anders. His name was almost a taboo. While Hawke was a hero and her tales were told often Anders was rarely mentioned. If Varric ever mentioned the man he seemed to skirt the issue of what the mage had actually done, preferring to focus on amusing anecdotes and casual lies.  
  
“He was an abomination. He allowed a demon to possess his body and did terrible things. Hawke should not have harbored him the way she did.” He should not have allowed it, his guilt leaden conscious supplied. If he had not felt so sorry for the woman, had not valued her aid to the community he might have seen what was going on. He might have pushed harder to take in the man who would later blow up the Chantry. But he had turned a blind eye to so much in Kirkwall. Between Hawke and Meredith it was hard to imagine he had seen anything at all.  
  
“She loved him. She couldn’t just turn him over to be made Tranquil.” She tightened the last bit of his armor quickly and too tightly. He felt her move from right behind him and when he turned to look at her she was lying on the bed. She picked at a string that had worked itself loose on her shirt sleeve. “What would you do it I became possessed?” His heart tensed at the thought. And other thoughts that had been thinking. Thoughts that made him wonder if she was simply reading his mind.

 

“Please,” he managed, “don’t ask me that.” Trevelyan looked up at him and he saw hurt in her eyes. It was clouded with understanding which somehow made it all the worse to look at.  
  
“Oh. I mean, well. That’s my answer then isn’t it?” He sat down on the edge of the bed stiffly. He would strike her down. He knew in the deepest recesses of him that he would. It would be the only thing to do. But that didn’t mean it would be easy. It didn’t mean he would relish it.  
  
“No, it’s more complicated than that.” He thought of any way he might explain. But it seemed cruel to tell her he had run the scenarios through in his mind. He would not be tortured by a demon masquerading as a woman he had feelings for again. “Please, can we speak of something else?”  
  
\--  
  
He lowered his face to hers and kissed along her chin. She angled her head, licked the sweat from his upper lip. Her hands held tight to his shoulders, her fingers digging in with each thrust. She was close to her climax. She arched, slid her hands into his hair, pulled and moaned.  
  
The sound disrupted his rhythm but she didn’t seem to mind. He felt her pushing up against him, felt her toes curling in the sheets by his leg. She had been away on Inquisition business for over a week. Their coupling had been swift but now, Cullen’s mind was too addled by pleasure to have a concept of how long they had been at it, everything was slow and luxurious.  
  
She moaned his name and he swallowed against the rush it gave his blood. He kissed her neck, her hands sliding back to his shoulders. He felt a sharp tickle across his skin that settled against the nerves on his spine. He felt it again, heard a crackle as the sensation bloomed across his body, and then realized what it was. He pulled back from her roughly, his face contorted as panic and anger and fear shook him. Trevelyan looked at him with wide, guilty eyes. She pushed herself into a sitting position, reached out a hand that he shirked from.  
  
“Cullen, I’m sorry—“  
  
“You would use magic on me? In bed?” He shook his head almost still not believing that it had occurred. “After what they did to me? I told you what they did to me…” His voice cracked from anger and pain. He felt betrayed. Vulnerable. He got off the bed and began collecting his clothes, never leaving his back to her for longer than he absolutely needed to.  
  
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I wasn’t thinking. It was an accident,” she explained hurriedly. Frantically he was trying to put on his pants. But he was shaking violently. His eyes were wet and he couldn’t catch his breath. The room was spinning.  
  
“An accident? You lost control of your magic? Is that supposed to comfort me?” She had moved herself to the edge of the bed but the look he gave her stopped her from coming closer.  
  
“Cullen, I would never hurt you. It didn’t… It didn’t feel bad, did it? I saw your face. Before you realized what it was. You looked—“  
  
“Do not try to tell me that I enjoyed that,” he growled. He couldn’t believe her. Trying to manipulate him. Trying to convince him that she knew his thoughts better than he did. He pulled his shirt over his head, his mouth set in a grim line. When he glanced at her again he saw her three fold. Trevelyan and Amell and a Demon. His breath caught and he shook his head.

 

“You know I would never hurt you,” she said.  
  
“What I know…” he mumbled as he picked up his boots. “I knew that the mages deserved trust. I knew that the Templars would not abuse their power. I knew that the Maker had sent you to me to save me.” He shook his head again, wiped sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand. “I don’t know anything. I am a fool.” He took the stairs quickly, desperately. He needed to get away. He needed to find somewhere safe. When he reached the door at the bottom he paused. He thought he could hear her crying. Could demons cry? Another trick. He left without another word.  
  
\--  
  
Cullen sighed and looked down at the letter he had been writing. His hand hurt from holding the quill. To his left was a pile that still needed answering. He put the quill down, rubbed his tired hands over his face, and glanced down at the pile he had already responded to. He would need to look them over and make sure none were the ramblings of a mad man. He felt exhausted. His body poised on the brink of some breaking point that he didn’t know how to pull himself back from. This was it. He stood, prepared to march himself down to Cassandra and demand that she relieve him of his duties. How could be expected to serve as the commander of the forces if he saw demons in every shadow? He had become Meredith.  
  
“Commander?” Trevelyan’s voice accompanied by a knock at the door. He hesitated where he stood. He couldn’t face her. Whether she was demon or not he couldn’t look at her. “May I come in?”  
  
“Yes,” his mouth responded automatically. Hastily he began organizing his desk. It wasn’t even that messy but he supposed it was something to do with his hands. Something to keep his attention on while she was here. If he could avoid looking at her part of her power over him would be void.  
  
“Commander… Cullen…” He didn’t look up, just kept shuffling the papers as if there was some great need. Which there was. But he didn’t expect her to understand. Maker, he must seem insane. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean… I’ve been careful up until this point. I’ve tried so hard not to lose even a little bit of control when we were together. I just… I missed you, Cullen. I love you so much I was so happy to be back and I just…” Despite himself he looked up. She was still by the door, ready to leave should he order her out. Her eyes were red, her cheeks wet. His heart broke. He felt himself softening. If this was a trick it was a wicked one. “I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. It was so wrong of me. I came up with all kinds of excuses for myself but it’s just wrong. You trusted me and I…” She broke off into tears, covering her face with her hands.  
  
“I don’t know if this is real,” he heard himself admitting. She wiped her face on her sleeve and looked at him with concern tight in her brows.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Any of this! I don’t know. Lately I feel like… maybe I’m still there. It’s all just been tricks.” He let the papers in his hands fall to the floor, watched them flutter and still. His head was pounding now. He supposed it was the sight of her. She was puffy faced and sloppy, but she would transform soon. Her clothes would fall away and she would present herself to him to appease the basest of his desires. He looked forward to it if only for the certainty it would provide.

 

“Cullen.” The word was weighted with concern and care and love. It made him want to scream. He pushed the rest of the work off of his desk, tore off his gloves and as much of the armor as he could manage. Then he slunk to the floor amidst it all and wept into his hands.  
  
“Maker, help me. I cannot live like this.”  
  
“Cullen.” She was kneeling before him when he pulled his hands away. She was close enough that he could feel her on the air near him but she did not touch him. “We’ll get through this. I love you. Do you know that’s real?” He bit his lip as it trembled and lowered his eyes from her. He was unworthy to look at her. His shoulders shook.  
  
“Yes,” he managed weakly as a fresh round of sobs broke on him. He crawled to her, wrapped his arms around her smaller frame, and laid his head against her legs. Tentatively she placed a hand in his hair, running her fingers through it as the other wiped the tears from his cheeks.  
  
“Everything will be okay,” she reassured.  
  
He believed it.


End file.
